


it is our crooked aim

by misandrywitch



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, First War with Voldemort, M/M, Marauders, Post-Hogwarts, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 10:36:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2225919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misandrywitch/pseuds/misandrywitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s been gone for three days, and he didn’t tell Sirius where he was going or how long he’d be gone. He has no idea where Sirius is, or when he’ll be back. That’s how it’s been for a while now.<br/>He makes himself tea and runs a bath and sits in the tub until the water is grey and chilly with sloughed-off dirt. Remus is twenty-one. He feels eighty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	it is our crooked aim

When Sirius wakes up in the morning, the space in the bed next to him is empty and cold. It means Remus has left early, and it means Remus won’t be coming back until much later, and it means Sirius doesn’t know where he is. It isn’t a surprise, really, not these days. The floor is chilly under his feet as he walks out of the bedroom into the kitchen, which is dark. Sirius knew it would be. Remus never wakes up before noon unless life, limb or breakfast are at stake. Sirius supposes Order business falls into that first and second categories.

He makes himself coffee and sits on their tiny porch and smokes alone. The sky is grey and overcast and cold. It’s September, but it feels like winter.

Sirius finishes his cigarette, and gets dressed, and leaves the flat alone.

 

 

 

 

When Remus gets home the next evening, Sirius isn’t there. This isn’t a surprise; if anything, it’s more of a relief because Remus is exhausted and freezing and smells like a wet dog, and there is mud in his hair and his body aches in the way it does after the full moon. He’s been gone for three days, and he didn’t tell Sirius where he was going or how long he’d be gone. He has no idea where Sirius is, or when he’ll be back. That’s how it’s been for a while now.

He makes himself tea and runs a bath and sits in the tub until the water is grey and chilly with sloughed-off dirt. Remus is twenty-one. He feels eighty.

 

 

 

 

Traitor.

The word sits like a stone in the pit of Remus’s stomach, heavy and hard and inescapable. Traitor. One of them, a short list of people that’s growing shorter every day, is a betrayer. One of them has been leaking information about James and Lily to Voldemort. One of them doesn’t seem to care how many other people die for it to happen. It had been Gideon and Fabian Prewett who had proved it, their murders really. Dead before twenty-five, they’d been with a handful of Order members including James and Lily at the time and it had been secret, information nobody outside of the Order knew about. Five of them had been there and three had gotten away, and one of them was a traitor.

They’d sat in a room together in a circle, Remus and Sirius and James and Lily and Peter, and they hadn’t said anything, and the word had sat there in the middle between them. Traitor. There’s no way it can be any of them, which of course means that there’s no way it isn’t.

Remus goes to bed in the dark and he can’t stop himself from wondering where Sirius is, who he’s with. He doesn’t want to be asking these questions of himself but they’re stuck in his mind like a splinter under a fingernail. Persistent, painful.

Remus stays on his side of the bed, his back turned towards the empty pillow, and he reads a book he’s read a hundred times so the spine is cracked and pages soft, and he pretends he isn’t listening for the sound of the door opening. It isn’t true, he says to himself, talking to his book. It isn’t true, it isn’t possible, it isn’t true.

It is possible though. That’s the problem. Remus knows exactly what Sirius is capable of, and that’s the problem. Sirius is all quick action or closed-off walls, wildfire or smoldering ashes, anger and laughter or silence, and it’s hard to tell which side will win. Remus used to be able to tell, before Regulus died, he always used to be able to tell. Or the wolf can, maybe, sense it in the same way Remus can hear someone’s heartbeat from across the room.

It could be Remus too. They both know it, and that’s the problem.

 

 

 

 

Sirius could be dead. He could have been captured. He could be, at the very moment that Remus turns off the light, being tortured somewhere. He could be not being tortured somewhere, which is worse. Remus never knows for sure

It’s more likely that he didn’t tell Remus where he was going but he didn’t want Remus to know.

 

 

 

 

Its midafternoon and raining when Sirius comes home the next day. Remus is half-asleep on their ugly overstuffed couch imagining sunshine to nap in when the door bangs open and then shut, bringing a gust of wind that smells like rain and old leaves. Sirius dumps his jacket and then his boots on the floor of the kitchen and shakes water from his hair. When it’s wet outside the flat smells like a wet dog, and Sirius smells like motorcycle oil and old cigarette smoke and rainwater and breakfast.

Remus has never been gladder to see him, all limbs attached and in one piece, but he doesn’t say that. He doesn’t ask where Sirius has been. He doesn’t ask if Sirius has seen James and Lily and Harry.

“You might as well just give up any pretense of dignity and just shake,” Remus says.

Sirius glances at him and his face is mischievous. “Posh,” he says. “I gave up dignity ages ago. Probably when I thought it’d be wise to play Quidditch. Want me to put the kettle on? I’m fucking freezing, my bits are going to start dropping off in a minute.”

“That’d be a shame,” Remus says. Sirius grins at him over his shoulders as he fills the teakettle with water. “Oh good, you’ve saved me the crossword.”

“I think the cockroaches in the bathroom married and had a brood,” Remus gets up off the couch to follow Sirius into the kitchen. “I’m afraid I had to evict them.”

“No, you didn’t!” Sirius pauses from pulling mugs out of their cabinet. The mugs are chipped, acquired secondhand.

“They were looking ravenous,” Remus says. “I was worried for my safety.”

“Big scary werewolf,” Sirius smirks a little. “Afraid of a bug.”

“A bug with pincers, yeah. I’m not ashamed of my desire to pee in peace.”

The conversation doesn’t mean anything and its strange how they can fall back into nonsense with no trouble at all like they used to, even when nothing is like it used to be. Sirius’s teasing face, the bugs, the crosswords. Something inside of Remus’s chest aches.

Sirius is wringing his hair out and he has a day’s growth of stubble on his face and Remus never wants to stop looking at him. He can see the lines of Sirius’s collarbones through his soggy t-shirt and his face is so beautiful and familiar and Remus feels better. The conversation feels like they’ve never been apart, like there isn’t this space that exists when Remus comes home and Sirius isn’t there, or when Sirius asks him something and Remus doesn’t answer. It isn’t him. It isn’t possible, isn’t true.

Remus steps forward quickly, closes the space between them with his mouth. Sirius’s lips are chapped and his mouth hot, and Remus presses into the warmth of his body for a moment before he pulls back so their faces are inches apart. As soon as he does Sirius’s fingers are sliding up Remus’s back, pulling them together again so Sirius’s face is somewhere near Remus’s collarbone and Remus’s lips are in his hair. Sirius breathes out into Remus’s neck and they hold onto each other tight, so tight it hurts, until the kettle whistles. He holds him like maybe if they get close enough together the rest of the world outside of this will stop existing. And then kettle whistles, and Sirius steps back to pour water into mugs.

Sirius hands him tea, and their fingers touch as the mug passes from one hand to the other.

“Where were you, anyway?” Sirius asks, and Remus sighs because Sirius knows he won’t get an answer but he asks anyway. Sirius pushes buttons. It’s how he gets the upper hand.

“Dumbledore’s business,” Remus sips his tea which is too hot. He coughs for a second, hoping that will direct Sirius’s attention, but it doesn’t work.

“What the fuck was he thinking? On the full moon?”

“It was necessary, Pads,” Remus says. It’s the fastest way to make other werewolves trust you, to change with them and run with them and hunt with them. It’s also the most dangerous thing he can imagine. But he can’t tell Sirius that.

“You should have been here,” Sirius says stubbornly. “You shouldn’t have been alone. He fucking knows that.”

“I’m fine,” Remus says. He feels better than he has in a long time after the full moon, from stretching and running and fighting free and fast and far away from anyone and anything else but the pack. He had kept up with them, proved himself, and it makes him feel invigorated, even now. But he can’t tell Sirius that. Sirius looks at Remus and the wolf and sees two things, one good thing and one bad thing. Remus is more than one thing, but none of them are all good, and they aren’t divided down a neat line like that. The wolf is always there, and Remus makes most of the bad decisions.  

And Remus’s work is a secret, deadly secret, the kind of secret that could get him killed if anyone at all knows. So he can’t tell.

Sirius makes a disgruntled noise. “You don’t look fine,” he says. “No offense, but you look exhausted.”

“You’re quite the charmer,” Remus quips. “I always look exhausted. I thought weedy and pale was your type.” He turns to leave the kitchen assuming, probably wrongly, that that’s the end of it. He’s wrong, of course, because Sirius is following him.

“You don’t have to do everything he tells you to, you know,” he says. “Dumbledore.” Sirius presents Dumbledore’s name with a sneer, like it tastes bad. Sirius has shaken out many of the habits and attitudes that have clung to him from his practically royal upbringing, but he still has his ability to be unbelievably condescending at the drop of a hat. It’s a tilt of his chin and gleam to his eyes that he used to adopt all the time. It’s faded, but he still retains the ability to be carrying on a loud conversation about farts one minute and the next look like he’s meeting the Minister of Magic and finding him wanting. It’s like he throws a switch and becomes the heir to the Ancient and Noble House of Black, cold and handsome and imperious. His father probably looked like that. This time it probably isn’t even a conscious decision, it just happens with the mention of Dumbledore’s name, automatic dislike.

Remus knows it goes much deeper than that. Dumbledore thinks that Sirius might be the traitor. Sirius knows it.

“I don’t,” Remus says testily. He snags his book from the couch with the intention of sitting back down again but Sirius catches his arm. “It’s important. To me and the Order.”

“You don’t owe him anything Moony,” Sirius’s fingers are tight around Remus’s forearm and Remus twists away a little because the idea is absurdly laughable, of course he owes Dumbledore, he owes Dumbledore everything really and he hasn’t always been good at repaying it. But Sirius’s fingers are right around his forearm and his face is close to Remus’s and his jaw is tight and angry.

“Sirius—“ Remus starts.

“He doesn’t own you,” Sirius snaps. Sirius is beautiful when he’s angry. Their foreheads are almost touching and Sirius takes another half-step forward so they’re hip to hip. His anger has dawned on him just like that, like a cruel late-afternoon thunderstorm that closes in without warning.  “He doesn’t get to just tell you what to do.”

“Neither do you,” Remus bites out. He shrugs Sirius’s fingers off of his arm, his own grip a lot stronger than it looks, and traps Sirius’s wrist between his fingers. His skin is hot under Remus’s grip.

“Damn it, Remus,” Sirius hisses. “Why do you always have to—“ His hand, the free one, flickers up to Remus’s face and cups his chin. Remus can feel his anger-hot breath against his neck. He turns his head a little, averting his eyes. “Just look at me,” he says, and Remus’s eyes snap back before he can stop himself.

This isn’t going to help. This isn’t going to fix anything, this is just going to tangle everything up more but Remus can’t stop himself, he’s never been able to even when it it’s the worst time for it, not when it comes to Sirius. Sirius’s fingers trace is jawline, the old scar on his chin, the line of his lips. Remus can’t stop, not this, so Remus kisses him.

Sirius moans into his mouth and his teeth press against Remus’s lower lip so Remus shudders. Sirius bites down just hard enough for it to hurt and Remus winds his fingers into Sirius’s hair and yanks his head back. Sirius’s eyes are bright and concentrated and angry, and he smirks because he knows it’ll get a rise out of him. Remus pulls his head back a little more and bites Sirius’s earlobe, runs his tongue down his neck and Sirius’s fingers start working their way under his sweater.

“Take it off,” he demands, and Remus lets Sirius push him backwards towards the bedroom with determined urgency.

“That’s your job,” Remus says, and Sirius growls against his mouth, his fingers tangling in Remus’s sweater. They stop when Sirius backs Remus up against the closed bedroom door so hard Remus’s head collides with it.

“Remus,” Sirius gasps, and his mouth is working its way down Remus’s neck, teeth teasing. “Remus, why is the fucking door closed, why did you close the fucking door, what the fuck were you thinking—“ Remus’s response is muffled because Sirius is tugging Remus’s shirt up over his head with one hand while he pounds ineffectively on the door with the other.

“I didn’t—fuck—“ Sirius is grinding against him and Remus can feel his cock hard through his jeans. “Pads—“ Remus gasps. “There’s a doorknob in my back—“

“I’m gonna kick it down,” Sirius pulls back far enough that Remus can see the expression on his face and he thinks for a half a minute that he’s actually going to do it so he takes the only option available to him to prevent the imminent destruction of their rented property and because he doesn’t know if he can take the weight of Sirius’s body up against him, the press of his thighs against Remus’s. If Remus doesn’t do something Sirius will break the door down, and Remus won’t do anything to stop him. He grabs Sirius’s shoulders and practically shoves him so Sirius is pressed up against the door instead. Sirius’s fingers hook into the waistband of Remus’s pants, simultaneously pulling him closer and pulling them down, but Remus smacks his hand away and he kisses Sirius, tracing Sirius’s mouth with the tip of his tongue so Sirius shudders against him.

“Tell me what you want,” Remus whispers into Sirius’s mouth. Sirius says something unintelligible so Remus pulls back.

“Please,” Sirius gasps as Remus rocks their hips together. “Moony, I need—“

“Tell me what you want,” Remus repeats. His fingers tangle in Sirius’s hair, the other hand tracing his collarbone and then the line of his throat.

Sirius’s fingers are back at Remus’s waist, fumbling with the button and his fly, and his response is almost a groan. “I want to suck you off,” he says desperately. His eyes are huge, pupils dilated, and Remus takes pity on him and flicks the button on his pants open with his thumb. Sirius twists again so Remus is flat against the door and then he’s sliding Remus’s pants down and his hands are anchored on Remus’s hips, and then his tongue is on the tip of Remus’s cock and Remus can’t bite back his own noise.

When they were new at this, still fumbling around each other’s bodies, they relied on pretense and asking pointed, cautious questions, but Remus knows what Sirius wants and he’s too desperate to care about decorum or delicacy or how this probably looks. He winds his fingers into Sirius’s hair and Sirius glances up at him, lashes making shadows on his cheeks and he’s teasing Remus on purpose with his tongue until Remus thrusts into his mouth. He doesn’t do it as hard or as deep as Sirius probably wants but Sirius still moans around him and that is almost enough to tear Remus apart right there. He goes slow because he knows it’s agonizing and Sirius doesn’t take his eyes off Remus’s face. His hand, the one not pinioning Remus’s hips to the door, starts to work on the button of his own pants, and the moment Remus sees it he tugs hard on Sirius’s hair.

“Did I say you could do that?” He asks, and it’s ruined a little by the fact that Sirius shoves at his hips and twists his tongue and his voice breaks. Remus pulls at Sirius’s hair and practically drags him back to his feet because he’s not ready for this to end, not yet.

“Open the fucking door,” Remus growls and Sirius does so, practically shoving Remus through it and onto the bed, shedding his shirt and then his pants as he goes. Remus almost trips over the edge of the bed and ends up on his back with Sirius on top of him and Remus wraps one hand around Sirius cock and strokes him. Sirius gasps, his mouth hot on Remus’s neck, thrusting against Remus’s hand.

“Tell me what you want,” Remus demands, and Sirius curses against his neck, a string of nonsense as Remus twists his fingers.

He doesn’t know what he wants Sirius to say, why he hopes that if he can just get close enough to him then he’ll be able to know, to feel it somehow in the way Sirius tastes or how his body is pressed up against Remus’s.

“I want you to fuck me,” Sirius breathes into Remus’s neck, and Remus pushes him up and off and then onto his knees, and he does.

They’ve been here before, hundreds of times in a hundred different permutations of this same moment, the two of them stumbling through their flat like thieves after dark or sliding hands over each other in late morning sunshine. Happy and laughing, or sad, or angry, or clinging to each other in the dark when something’s gone wrong, drunk sometimes and laughing into each other’s mouths, and sometimes deadly silent like if either of them makes a sound then someone will know. It’s happened in rented inn rooms in Diagon Alley, and once in James’s spare bedroom, and nervously and earnestly in Hogwarts hallways (one particularly memorable blowjob under a table in the library comes to mind), and on every possible surface of this flat and of course in this room, this bed. The first time Remus had fucked him had been here, years ago it seems, and Sirius’s fingers had shook as they’d undone the buttons on Remus’s pants. Sirius, who was never nervous about anything. They hadn’t known how to fit together yet, and their desire had outweighed their finesse and it had been bad. They laughed about it later.

The next time, after that, Remus had asked him a question. “Do you trust me?” He’d said, and Sirius hadn’t even needed to say it out loud for Remus to believe him.

Remus knows exactly what he’s doing now, knows what will make Sirius press back against his fingers and arch his back and say, his voice cracking, “Fuck you, you merciless tease, when I said fuck me I meant _fuck me,_ please Remus, please, please—“ Sirius manages to be both pushy and desperate at the same time, and Remus has always loved it, but this is different somehow, this is different.

“I will when I’m ready,” Remus growls and Sirius slams one hand on the headboard and curses into the pillow. Somehow, Remus thinks, this is different. They’ve been here before but this is different and he thinks maybe if he can do this, just shake Sirius apart then the truth will come flying out of him and then he’ll know, he’ll know.

“Merlin—“ Sirius chokes out as Remus fingers him, “Please, Moony, please, you’re killing me here,” Remus’s fingers wind into his hair, pulling his head back a little and Sirius whines, “What the fuck do you _want_ from me?”

The truth, Remus thinks, the truth. He leans forward, mouth and then teeth on the curve of Sirius’s shoulder, and then he takes pity on him finally and he angles Sirius’s hips with his fingers and he starts fucking him for real. Sirius drops his head onto the mattress and spreads his thighs apart and Remus doesn’t have it in him to be anything but ruthless. He keeps one hand in Sirius’s hair and the other wraps around his waist, trying to get as close as possible, as if that will prove something, as if that will show him.

“Touch yourself,” Remus gasps out, and Sirius whines into the pillow in protest. “That’s what I want from you.”

“Moony—“

“Do it,” Remus barks and sinks his teeth into Sirius’s shoulder and Sirius does, his face in the pillow and one hand around his own cock and Remus thrusts into him. Sirius is cursing, a string of nonsense muffled by the pillow, and Remus usually doesn’t like to make noise when he does this but he can’t help it. “Jesus Christ, you’re fucking beautiful,” he gasps out. “Come on, come—“

Sirius comes with a ragged shout and Remus follows a second later. He collapses forward onto Sirius’s sweat-slicked back and then rolls over when Sirius moves so they’re lying side by side in the bed, panting.

There’s usually a moment, after, where Sirius will grin over at him and say something cheeky and stupid and euphoria-driven, “You really had me howling, har har,” or something else that’s so ridiculous that Remus will lean over and kiss him, tired and together. But Sirius doesn’t move. Remus can hear his breath, ragged in the quiet air, and his own, and he thought this would make him feel better but it doesn’t. 

“Fuck,” Sirius says, and his voice sounds hollow. He sits up slowly, gathering his hair back out of his face, fumbling in the bedside table for cigarettes and his lighter. There’s a momentary flare of heat as the cigarette lights, and Remus watches him sit up and turn away, swinging his feet off his side of the bed.

Remus is a social smoker, while Sirius’s habit is almost chronic, and they’ve developed a routine out of this. Sirius lights a cigarette, drags on it, passes it to Remus, who takes a drag. They will sit like that, side by side in bed with blankets tangled around their feet until the cigarette’s nothing more than a butt. It started at school, joints and tobacco shared over late-night pranks or chilly evenings in the Astronomy tower, when the thing between them was nothing more than a strange lingering question and glances that drag on too long, before the kiss in an empty school hallway that changed everything in one second and one touch. Before the Order. Before the war. When their whole lives were stretched in front of them, long and fantastical and full of hope and it had been the four of them, best friends forever, and none of them could imagine anything that could come between them. When Remus believed that everything would somehow be okay. When he could pretend that this would work out, somehow, that there’s some happiness possible at the end of this story.

Sirius doesn’t pass him the cigarette.

He sits for a minute, smokes it in silence and his shoulders are hunched in on himself, away from Remus. And then he stands up and walks slowly towards the shower.

“Where are you going?” Remus asks.

“I have some shit to take care of,” Sirius says.

“Tell me what you want,” Remus says quietly before he can stop himself and Sirius stops, looks over his shoulder back at the bed.

“I want you to believe me,” Sirius says, and his eyes are so grey they are almost silver.  And just like that Remus is fifteen again. Remus is lying in a Hogwarts hospital bed with his back turned to the wall, and Sirius is lying through his teeth and saying he didn’t think, didn’t know, didn’t mean to. Remus is fifteen and exhausted and so, so angry and half in love already and sick to his stomach because of it. “I want you to be honest.”

“It isn’t me,” Remus’s lips are numb. Sirius turns again and leaves the room and Remus doesn’t know if he even heard him or if he just doesn’t care.

It’s 1981. It feels like the end of the world.

**Author's Note:**

> i've been into this ship for ten fucking years you would think it would stop hitting me in the face by now, but no. 
> 
> the title comes from 'we are hard' by margaret atwood, which is a horribly wonderfully fantastic poem that you should all check out for the title to make sense.
> 
> shittybknights.tumblr.com


End file.
